Dan Schnur

Dan Schnur News

Mitt Romney has followed the playbook for winning the Republican presidential nomination to the letter. He raised more money than his opponents and built a national organization. He piled up endorsements from prominent party insiders. He proved he could win in a bellwether primary in New Hampshire and a major state in Florida.

Neel Kashkari, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive chosen by ex-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to help rescue the U.S. banking system, is readying a challenge to California Governor Jerry Brown even as the world’s 10th-largest economy reaches its highest level in more than three decades.

Democrats have turned to an agenda that Republicans are calling class warfare, as President Barack Obama presses a “Buffett Rule” to tax the rich, Senate Democrats offer a millionaires’ tax instead and party leaders fulminate against Bank of America’s $5 debit-card service fee.

Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, who has cast the 2012 presidential campaign as “free enterprise on trial,” finds himself in a struggle over the role of capitalism in an unlikely place: within his own party.